Prada's 2015 menswear collection is conservative, seeking to be radical

"It was kind of conservative," said Miuccia Prada of her latest menswear collection, "because I thought that was the only new thing possible." It is a testament to the designer's skilful and relentless boundary-pushing that such a deliberately contrary declaration was met with sage nodding backstage.

For this is the label that sets the agenda at Milan fashion week. If Prada says that classic clothes with a whiff of the early 70s and a sombre colour palette are modern, her track record indicates that she will be proven right.

The deliberate awkwardness which defines the brand was evident as soon as guests arrived at the show on Sunday night. The catwalk set featured a cobalt-coloured ankle-deep pool with a brown carpet at the water's edge. Carpets and pools aren't a natural pairing but in the hands of Prada the set looked sleek.

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If guests were expecting the Prada pool to feature hunks in trunks they were in for a disappointment as the brand sent out a collection heavy on car coats, denim and shrunken knitwear. "The pool is a classic for summer," said Prada backstage. "It was a joke and an irony on what was classic."

The clothes themselves were what could be termed sombre occasion wear. The sort of clothes that feature in family photos with curved corners from the late 60s and early 70s. Brown car coats, moss-green trousers neither skinny nor wide which stopped at the ankle, shrunken V-neck jumpers, buttoned-up blue shirts and no ties. The colour palette of Wes Anderson's film costumes and charity shop silhouettes, as worn by that family friend with the side-parted, slicked hair in that old photo.

But to dismiss this as a retro collection that could be aped with charity shop bargains is to miss the point. It wasn't about recreating a trend from a bygone era, it was about taking classic and familiar products, injecting a touch of haute awkwardness and making undesirable clothes desirable.

Take the chunky visible parallel stitching on the pockets and trouser seams, which were reminiscent of cut-out paper dolls' wardrobes. Some featured real pockets, some merely meant to look like pockets – the "stitches" were actually embroidery. Stitching isn't usually seen as desirable but nothing is obvious when it comes to Prada.

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This was a collection that provided a wide-angle view of the Prada brand – its lack of rules, its agenda-setting, its international scope and its focus on defining moods not throwaway trends.

Sunday's catwalk also featured womenswear – buttoned-through dresses and heeled loafers. It is a tactic increasingly used by designers to showcase in-between, resort collections that make up the bulk of a brand's sales. But backstage, Prada dismissed the notion that the womenswear amounted to a resort collection, saying: "I don't like resort."

Indeed, the designer is not one for rules. Nor is she constrained by seasons – coats were often paired with sandals and bare feet, showing scant regard for practicalities and even seasons. But when you consider that Prada is an international brand selling to various climates at the same time it makes sense. Besides, coats and boots doesn't look half as modern.

Calvin Klein Collection’s Pre-Fall Menswear

Italo Zucchelli, the creative director of Calvin Klein Collection’s menswear, was unexpectedly enthusiastic about a subject in fashion—at least in men’s fashion—that most prefer to ignore: pre-collections. “It’s kind of new for men,” Zucchelli said. Not long ago, the situation was much the same for womenswear: Pre-collections were commercial lines, meant to bolster store buys (in practice, they often make up to 70 percent, or more, of many retailers’ annual purchases) and distill the themes of the mainline “editorial” collections presented on the runway into more wearable, salable form. But anyone reading over the past few years has seen pre-collections boom, often into runway shows of their own. (See our complete coverage if you disbelieve.)

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ould the same happen for menswear? Zucchelli, for one, makes such a thing seem possible. (His sales, he reports, are split fifty-fifty between pre-collections and Spring and Fall collections.) “The pre-collections became bigger and bigger,” he said. “Now I’m injecting fashion.” The Pre-Fall 2014 collection, debuting here, makes the point. The airy palette of the Spring ’14 collection, inspired in part by the work of James Turrell, turned darker, but blue remained dominant. Makes sense: Navy is a color no man is afraid to buy. But Zucchelli made good on his promise of more fashion in this traditionally sales-friendly offering. A bonded flannel car coat, easy and approachable, was spliced together with a panel of contrast fabric. “Techy” was Zucchelli’s word for it. That future-leaning, technological bent, which has characterized many of his collections for the label, was evident throughout: In the moire jacquard motif on suits and jackets, the slash details worked into the seams of tailored garments, and, most of all, the printed graphic sweatshirts and tees that the designer said were already attracting significant sales attention. They featured blue-tinted aerial illustrations of one of the world’s techiest cities: Tokyo.

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